Testing the Current

by William McPherson

  “That’s nice of him,” Tommy said.

  Mr. Wolfe had brought him a book. “I’ve a present for you, Tommy,” he said. “It’s about a little boy who lives south of the border in Mexico. I’ve seen a lot of those little boys. I hope you like it.”

  “Thanks,” said Tommy. He realized he should have said, “Thanks, Mr. Wolfe”—you were always supposed to call people by their names—but it was too late. He opened the book. “It looks interesting.”

  “Well,” said Mr. Wolfe, “you give me a report on it. Tell me the new words you learn. You’ll learn some.”

  Mr. Wolfe helped Tommy’s mother into her coat. She bent to kiss Tommy good night. “Go to bed when Rose tells you,” she said. When they had gone, Tommy took the book to the brown silk chair in the living room. He looked at it for a while. The book had a lot of pictures and some Spanish words. The boy was very poor. He was called a “muchacho” in Spanish, and he wore a hat that was almost bigger than he was. It was called a “sombrero.” There was a picture of him squatting in the dust, wearing his sombrero. The book did look interesting—the family was so poor that the boy, whose name was Pedro, had to help his father in the fields outside of town—but Tommy didn’t feel like reading it then. He got up, locked the front door—they almost never locked it, although the windows were always locked, but he did tonight; it made him feel safer, enclosed in his tight house—and he went to his room, where he slipped the book into his bookshelf. That was the second present Mr. Wolfe had given him. The coin still rested on his windowsill, the last coin of the old year, and the new year was already two months old. After a while Rose came up to put him to bed. She always let him stay up later than his mother did, and she let him have his curtains open and his blinds up, too, if he wanted.

  Tommy lay there for a long time, looking at the dull orange glow in the northern sky, thinking his own thoughts. He could see lights at the Randolphs’. Maybe he should have stayed at Jimmy Randolph’s after all; he would have had company and it would have been a lot of fun, drinking Cokes and playing. He wondered if Jimmy was in bed yet. Probably not. He was sure Amy Steer was, though. He wondered why the Steers weren’t going to Dr. Rodgers’ party; they’d been friends at New Year’s. He wondered what Mrs. Slade was doing. He got out of bed and looked out his east window, the window that faced the Slades’. There were lights in Mrs. Slade’s bedroom, too, but she hardly ever went to bed at night; she slept a lot during the day. He hadn’t seen Mrs. Slade in a long time. She hadn’t been well again. It must have been two years ago that she’d gone to the Mayo Clinic and had her operation. And then she burned herself when he was in first grade. David was at college that year. He’d seen her a lot then, and after she’d gotten back from her trip with the Randolphs, too. He’d seen her when his grandmother died, but he didn’t like to go over there if Mrs. Slade didn’t want to play with him, and sometimes she didn’t. All Lily and Jenny wanted to do was get him to pull down his pants, and they never pulled theirs down—or only once, Lily, the younger, did. Jenny had hair and wouldn’t do it. At least, Jimmy said she had hair, but he didn’t believe Jimmy’d ever seen it either. When he was a little boy, his parents sometimes brought him into bed with them on weekend mornings, and Tommy would snuggle down in the hollow between them for a while. That was nice. It was warm and cozy, and they had a big comfortable bed. But they never wanted to do anything. They wanted to sleep, and Tommy would get bored after a while, and then he’d start to get restless, and his mother would tell him to settle down and close his eyes and pretend he was falling asleep, which he would for a minute but not for long. It was hard to pretend he was falling asleep when he was wide awake. And then his father would roll over toward him, and he’d feel squashed between them, and he’d have to push their bodies away. It took all his strength. He’d use both his hands, and brace his feet against his mother, and push his father with all his might. And then his mother would wake up and tell him to pretend he was sleeping again, and she would doze off. That really was a long time ago. He didn’t think he’d done it since he’d found out his mother wasn’t twenty-two years old. That was a joke. Imagine his ever thinking that his mother was twenty-two. She certainly didn’t look twenty-two to him now. That was John’s age. No, his mother looked old. Well, she didn’t look so old as some of the other mothers Tommy had seen, even though she was older than most of them. She didn’t look as old as Mrs. Randolph, and Mrs. Randolph must have been pretty old, too. She didn’t even look as old as Mrs. Steer, though Mrs. Steer was younger. His mother was smaller, though, and prettier than Mrs. Steer. How old was his mother? He couldn’t remember exactly. Forty something. Forty-five? Something like that. It didn’t matter. She was his mother no matter how old she was. And he would always be her little boy, that’s what she’d told him, only she’d said “baby” and Tommy hadn’t liked it. He wasn’t a baby. He was a boy, a fine young man his grandmother had said a long time ago when he really was practically a baby. That was nice of her. His grandmother was nice, and he thought of her now, all alone in the frozen earth except for the other people all alone too, and he missed her. He missed her a lot sometimes, even though she was strange before she died and called him by his father’s name and got him all mixed up with his brothers and his father and people whose names Tommy didn’t recognize. That’s what happened when you got really old, you got everything all mixed up. Tommy didn’t want to get that old, just older. He was cold. He jumped back into bed, but his bed was cold, too, and he thought maybe he could fall asleep in his mother’s bed. Maybe he would get into that big warm comfortable bed, where he’d hidden under the blankets while his parents slept, or tried to, and pretended he was making tents. But it used to be so hot and stuffy and dark, and finally he would have disturbed them so much that either they’d send him back to his room to play, which was what he wanted anyway, or they’d get up. It wouldn’t be hot and stuffy and dark now, though; there was no one there. It would be cozy and warm and comfortable; and he got out of his cold bed and went into his mother’s room in the dark. He opened all the curtains and raised the shades so there would be a little light, and then he opened one of the windows facing the porch roof and opened the storm window, too, so there would be air. The storm window worked on a hinge, and you could push it out from the bottom. He felt the draft of cold air, and he jumped quickly into his mother’s big bed under the downy comforter and between the cool sheets, which soon warmed up, and in a short time he grew very sleepy watching the shadows pass slowly across his mother’s mirrors, the gray reflections of the night.

  He knew it was very late when his eyes popped open. It had to be very late. He heard a strange noise. It was on the porch roof. A thump, and then another thump. He called out, “Mommy! Mommy!” but then he remembered that his mother wasn’t there. She was out, and he was still in her bed. Oh, why wasn’t he in his own bed? He heard the thump again. He became very frightened, and he lay very still, listening, watching. Thump. He heard crunching noises—they had to be on the porch roof, they were so close—and suddenly a shadow, a figure across the window of his mother’s bedroom! Shadows flickered across the mirror. Tommy froze in terror. This was no dream. Was it? No. This was no dream at all. This was an actual man, and his hand was reaching under the storm window to pull it farther open. It could open very wide, wide enough for someone to slip through and to raise the window behind it. He heard the noise the window made. They were going to be robbed. There might be a murder; he might be killed. Appointment with Death. His eyes were frozen wide. Tommy tried to move. He couldn’t. Suddenly, gathering all his force of body and will, he hurled himself fiercely from the bed and raced to the opening window, to slam it shut on the man’s hand, to break the man’s hand and make him howl with pain, and he grabbed the window and tangled with the curtains at the same time and pulled them from the wall, rod and all, and they fell over his head, enveloping him, blinding him, before he could force the window shut. He thrashed furiously against the curtains, striking out with t
he terrible strength within him. He heard a voice. “Tommy?” It was practically a whisper. “Tommy?” And then the voice spoke in another direction and said, “Tommy’s awake.”

  “Oh, no.” It was his mother’s voice.

  “Tommy,” the voice whispered, “it’s all right. It’s Luke Wolfe.” Tommy was pulling the curtains away from him. He had lost his breath and couldn’t say a word. “It’s Luke Wolfe and everything’s all right. You locked your mother out, that’s all.”

  Tommy could feel his heart racing in his chest. His breath was coming in short gasps. He tried to catch it. “I broke the curtains,” he said. “I tore them right off the wall.” He stepped out of them and stood amidst the rose-colored silk, gray in the dark, as it lay in a crumpled heap on the floor at his feet. “Where’s Mother?” He was shaking, trying to keep his teeth from chattering.

  “She’s standing on the porch, waiting to be let in. We got the ladder from the garage and had to climb up to the roof to find an open window.” They never did lock the garage. “She didn’t have her key. She didn’t expect to find the door locked.”

  “I locked it,” Tommy said “I forgot.” He was still shaking. Mr. Wolfe was still standing outside the window. “May I come in now?” he asked.

  “Why didn’t you ring the doorbell?”

  “We didn’t want to wake you. I guess we did, though. I’m sorry if I scared you. Will you let me in? It’s cold out here.” For the first time Tommy felt the cold air blasting into the room. He stood aside, and Mr. Wolfe hunched over and came in the window, stepping across the sill and onto the curtains. He squeezed Tommy’s shoulder and said again that everything was all right, and tiptoed downstairs to open the front door. Tommy guessed they hadn’t wanted to waken Rose, either.

  Tommy got into his bathrobe and came halfway down to the bend in the big stairway. He could see everything from there. His mother threw her coat on a chair in the hall and rushed toward him. “Oh, darling,” she said. “I’m so sorry you were frightened.” She repeated it. “I’m so sorry you were frightened. I love you so much. I wouldn’t frighten you for the world.” She hugged him close to her. Tommy could smell the faint warm traces of her perfume. “What time is it?” he asked. “I don’t know,” his mother said. “It must be quite late.” She hugged him again. “Give us a kiss,” she said.

  “Where’s your arrow? Did you lose it?”

  “I took it off,” his mother said. “The clasp broke. It’s in my purse.” She asked Mr. Wolfe if he would go into the kitchen and warm some milk on the stove. “Don’t wake Rose,” she whispered.

  “Nothing could,” Mr. Wolfe whispered back, laughing.

  His mother held Tommy close as she walked him back up the stairs and into his own small room.

  Mr. Wolfe brought the glass of warm milk to his bedroom. He told Tommy again that he was sorry he scared him. He seemed really sorry. “I wasn’t scared,” Tommy said. And Mr. Wolfe told his mother that he’d come back tomorrow and fix the curtain rod. His mother said, “Lucien, would you let yourself out?”

  “Yes, of course,” he said. “Goodbye, and thank you. Good night, Tommy. Better dreams now.”

  “It was a lovely evening,” his mother said, “and thank you for seeing me home. I’m sorry it was so much trouble.” They heard Mr. Wolfe shut the door behind him, and his car start and drive away. Tommy sat in his bed, propped up on his pillows, and drank his warm milk. He stopped shivering after a time, and he told his mother to go down and lock the door.

  “There’s no need to lock the door, Tommy,” she said, “we’re all in the house now.” But Tommy insisted. “I wish Daddy were home,” he said. His mother did lock the door, and then she came back to his room and sat beside him, humming her lullabies, until finally he fell asleep again.

  The next morning the curtains still lay crumpled on the floor where they had fallen, rod and all. Tommy could see Mr. Wolfe’s footprint on them.

  They were all up early. His mother had to drive Rose home after breakfast. “I’ll be back soon,” she said. “It won’t take me long, and then we’ll have our day together.”

  “I’m going over to the Steers’,” Tommy said. “Jimmy and Amy and I are going to play. Didn’t I tell you?”

  “No,” his mother said. “You didn’t tell me. It’s too early to go over to the Steers’. I’m not at all sure that you should.”

  “Oh,” Tommy said, “I thought I told you. Well, if it’s too early, Mrs. Steer will tell me and I’ll come back home.”

  In the morning light, Tommy thought it was funny that he’d locked his mother out of the house. She wasn’t even mad at him—she didn’t tell him that he couldn’t go to the Steers’—and the happenings in the middle of the night, now that the sun was shining, that the day was here, struck him as quite funny—their having to get the ladder and climb onto the roof and open the window—and even exciting, like a mystery story; not like Appointment with Death; more like one of Jenny Slade’s Nancy Drews. He could hardly wait to tell Mrs. Steer about it. He’d make a funny story out of it, and she would laugh.

  She did, too, but Tommy guessed she didn’t think it was as funny as he did. Amy did, though, and so did Jimmy, who was already there. “I would have pushed the ladder right off the roof,” Jimmy said. “I would have jumped out the window and pushed it off the roof with him on it.” Well, Jimmy was two years older, and stronger, and he didn’t really know Mr. Wolfe, either. Mrs. Steer, who was listening to them, said that would have been an even worse disaster. “All your mother would have needed would be Lucien Wolfe spread-eagled on the ground in the middle of the night with a broken leg—or worse. The whole neighborhood would have been aroused. No”—she chuckled—“I think that would have been the wrong thing to do, Jimmy. Definitely the wrong thing to do.”

  “Well, my father could have fixed it,” Jimmy said.

  “If you’d been at the party, Mrs. Steer, you could have taken my mother home,” Tommy said. “Then everything would have been all right.”

  “I’m afraid Dr. Rodgers thinks I’m stuffy,” said Mrs. Steer, “and your mother still would have been locked out.” Tommy knew that Mrs. Steer could have handled the ladder as well as Mr. Wolfe. She’d carried ladders all around her house when she was painting. “Of course, she could have spent the night here and wakened you in the morning with a phone call. Well, that’s enough of that,” she said, picking up her book. “You children run along now. Find something to do. I’m going to read.”

  “What are you reading?” Tommy asked her.

  “I’m reading a book called Anticipating the Eventual Emergence of Form,” she said.

  “What a funny title,” Tommy said.

  “Yes, I suppose it is. But it’s what we all hope will happen someday, someday before we die. Run along now, all of you,” and Mrs. Steer opened her book and began to read, the ash of the cigarette in her hand growing longer and longer. She wouldn’t talk anymore. She didn’t even look up, and the three of them went outside to play for a while until Amy decided she wanted to go home and Tommy and Jimmy went over to Jimmy’s house.

  Dr. Randolph had just gotten back from making his house calls. Even on Sunday he made house calls. They were about to have lunch, and Mrs. Randolph asked if he’d like to stay. “I’ll have to call my mother,” Tommy said, “but yes, I’d like to.” His mother said it would be all right, and the four of them had hamburgers and French-fries. Mrs. Randolph liked to make French-fries. She was the only person Tommy knew who did. They were a lot of trouble to make because you had to cook them in deep fat, and the fat had to be very hot, hot enough to cook the potatoes but not hot enough to catch on fire.

  Jimmy told his mother that Tommy should have spent the night. “He got in trouble,” Jimmy said.

  “No,” Tommy said, “I didn’t get in trouble. You would have gotten in trouble, though. You would have pushed him off the roof and he might have died. People die when they fall off roofs, you know.” That’s what happened sometimes in the Depres
sion. People jumped off roofs. Timmy Stephenson’s father had even shot himself. That was a long time ago, before Tommy had started school, but all the children knew about it because Timmy and his mother moved away right afterwards. Tommy didn’t know where they’d gone. It wasn’t something the grown-ups liked to talk about in front of the children.

  “You did too get in trouble,” Jimmy said. “You locked your mother out of the house, and I’ll bet she was real mad.” Tommy didn’t like this. His mother wasn’t mad, but Tommy was getting mad at Jimmy.

  “What are you two talking about?” Mrs. Randolph asked.

  Jimmy told her what had happened, only he tried to make himself the hero, telling them what he would have done and never saying what Tommy had done, except that he’d gotten scared and pulled the curtains off the wall, which wasn’t the way it really happened at all. “Dad would have fixed his leg,” Jimmy said.

  “Shot him, that’s what I would have done. Just like a horse,” Dr. Randolph said, pouring ketchup on his hamburger.

  “P.T.,” Mrs. Randolph said, “would you stop talking like that? You’re so funny that some days I can’t stand it. If anybody ought to be shot, it’s you.” She wasn’t laughing, and Tommy didn’t think she thought Dr. Randolph was being very funny. Tommy couldn’t eat much of his hamburger. He wasn’t very hungry.

  “You’re eating like a bird, Tommy,” Mrs. Randolph said. “Try to eat some more of your hamburger. If it’s too much for you, I’ll take it off the bun and you can just eat the meat.” She didn’t wait for his reply but reached over and took the hamburger out of the bun. Tommy ate a little more, but he couldn’t finish it. He thought he ought to go home. This was the day he was supposed to spend with his mother.

  “Take care of yourself, my little friend,” Mrs. Randolph told him as he was leaving. “Take care, tender heart.”

  When Tommy got home, Mr. Wolfe had already been there and left. He’d fixed the curtain rod and put the curtains back, and Tommy’s mother was trying to take his footprint off the curtain. The room was filled with fumes from the cleaning fluid, and the windows were open wide. It was cold in the room. When she finished, you could hardly tell that the curtains had been stepped on. The fluid dried very rapidly, leaving only the faintest ring around the edges of the print. You had to look very closely to see it. “There,” his mother said. “No one will ever notice.”